The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1887-03-30
A High Price for the Whistle.

A large part OF Senator Shernan's speech
at Nashville is an attempted defence OF the
Republican protective tariff policy of
forcing the people OF the United States to
pay 40 per cent. more for certain manu-
featured goods than the trade price. He
virtually recognizes that the burden OF this
increased price falls On the farming inter-
est when he attempts TO prove that while
the home manufacturing interest is the
first beneficiary of the system, the farming
interest comes in for its share, also, in tn e
end The protective system, he says, has
increased our product of manufactures
from $3.50, 100000, in 1860, to $5,500,000,-
600 in 1886; and this enormous increase
shows how the manufacturing interest has
profted by the policy. But, says he, "we
give 10 the farmer a market for home pro
ductions, 50 that now of all productions Of
the farm over 80 per cent is consumed in
this country, and less than 10 per cent.
exported abroad"
Senator Sherman could not have meant
this last remark Tor the Southern commu-
nifty be was addressing. The South is a
| strictly agricultural region, with single
great staple, cotton; and the home manu-
| features which the protective tariff has
built up do not take more than so per
cent. of the Southern cotton crop; the
other ~ per cent. has 10 go abroad to find
a market or rot on the land. The Repub-
lican tariff policy does not, therefore, give
the South home market for 90 per cent
of its chief crop; indeed, it does not give
it anything at all as a compensation for
the extra 40 per cent. it forces them to pay
on their goods.
1t is the grain farmers Of the West tbs
Senator alludes to when he says "we give
them a market for 80 per cent OF their
home productions. But do not even the
grain farmers OF the West pay more for
this artificial market than it is worth
The Senator tells us that our product OF
manufactures last year was S., 800, 900, 600
and the average duty on imports is 80 per
cent In other words, he admits that our
product of home manufactures was in.
by the Republican tariff. The price OF
these manufactures without the tariff
would have been 81, 230, 0OO-and the sc
per cent. added to bring it up to $780,
100000 was S1,270,000,00O. So that, ac-
cording to the Ohio Senator's own figures
it cost the country $1,270000,0 600, or a
fourth more than the indemnity which the
Germans exacted Of the vanquished French
in 1870, to protect certain favored home
manufacturers in 1886 and the farming
interest paid its full share of this enor.
nous sum-about one-third, or S424 900,
000-to secure home market for part o.
their surplus crop.
A few years ago there were mines il
California and Nevada where every 81 in
gold taken out cost 81 25-and Senate,
Sherman's boosted protective policy is not
an apt illustration of them. The country
has built up large and varied system Of
manufactures chiefly in the East, but i
has been by paying the interest engaged il
them over a thousand million dollars q
year; and it has given Western farmers a
home market for part of their crop
but this has been by taking from then
every year a greater sum than the valus
of their entire wheat crop, and giving it il
gratuities to favored manufacturers.-SI
Louis Republican.